


Fuck Me For Givin' A Fuckever

by Still_beating_heart



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 10x08, Canon Compliant, Canon Triggers Apply, Canon warning apply, I didn't start the problems, I repeat, If fics about this show trigger you then don't read them, M/M, Not A Fix-It, This is a fill-in, fill-in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:21:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Still_beating_heart/pseuds/Still_beating_heart
Summary: 10x08 fill-in.  This is not a fix-it.  This is a fill-in.  Canon triggers and warnings apply.  I did not remove the punch.  I repeat, this is a fill-in.------------The words are written in block letters in black ink.  They exited his mouth at the diner.  They formed solid objects in the space between them.  Those solid objects felt more like glue just a moment ago.  And now, with the pen in his hand and his hand unmoving over the paper, they feel more like bricks.  They feel like more bricks in the wall between them.  That wall that neither one of them will ever be able to tear down.  That wall that was built with every brick of every failure of every past moment and present worry and future… future what?  Future what?Another brick.He’s talking in the elevator but Mickey can’t hear him over the blood rushing in his ears.  Over the dryness in his mouth and the water in his eyes that he’ll blink back for eternity if it means not allowing himself to cry over Ian Gallagher again.  Again.--------------
Relationships: Ian Gallagher & Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 23
Kudos: 89





	1. Love, Trust, and Fire Ants

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is from Mickey's POV from the time Ian doesn't sign the paper to the time the punch is thrown.
> 
> I lied when I said I was done with season 10 BS. Thing is, I don't condone violence. But I watched the clips of ep 8 and they can't ruin Mickey for me unless I let them. So I won't let them. 
> 
> This is me trying to understand his return to solving his problems with violence. I repeat, I do not condone violence. I did not write the scene. I am just trying to understand it.

Love, Trust, And Fire Ants

Love.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Trust.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I love and trust you. Do you love and trust me?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The pen hovering over the paper. He only proposed because he thought you killed someone.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Love. Trust. Marriage.

Fuck it, I do.

Love. Trust. Marriage.

He’s not signing the paper. The paper you already signed. The paper he wanted. He brought it up. He brought it up. He wants to keep you out of jail. He thinks you killed someone. He wants to not have to testify against you. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t trust you.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The words are written in block letters in black ink. They exited his mouth at the diner. They formed solid objects in the space between them. Those solid objects felt more like glue just a moment ago. And now, with the pen in his hand and his hand unmoving over the paper, they feel more like bricks. They feel like more bricks in the wall between them. That wall that neither one of them will ever be able to tear down. That wall that was built with every brick of every failure of every past moment and present worry and future… future what? Future what?

Another brick. 

He’s talking in the elevator but Mickey can’t hear him over the blood rushing in his ears. Over the dryness in his mouth and the water in his eyes that he’ll blink back for eternity if it means not allowing himself to cry over Ian Gallagher again. Again.

Love.

What is love? Terry taught love with a heavy fist, an angry growl, and cigarettes against bare flesh. Nadiya taught love from the other side of a needle. 

What is love? Is love a sister who cries herself to sleep on the other side of the paper-thin wall every night. Is love feeling so helpless and so small when you’re a kid and you’re too young to do anything about it? Is love knowing all along that you could claw until your nails were broken and your fingers were bloodied, but you’d never get out of the hole he put you in?

What is love? A pistol whipping. A Russian prostitute on your lap as you watched the red-headed dream crumbling and becoming a nightmare.

What is love? Not everybody gets to blurt out how they fuckin’ feel every minute. Don’t. What you and I have makes me free. Together. I’m fuckin’ gay. 

What is love? Sickness. Health. 

What is love? You’re sick. You need help. A joyride with a baby. An angry wife. An absent sister. A psych ward. A punch in the fuckin’ face for givin’ a shit.

What is love? Love is blood and anger and violence and hatred and a feeling like you’re dying and all he can say is ‘this isn’t me anymore’. 

What is love? If it isn’t sandals and tequila and us and the beach? Then it’s cartel and drugs and guns and violence. Fight to survive. Fists. Weapons. 

What is love? I rolled on a cartel. And prison. Disneyland block is still prison. It’s still bars and cinderblocks and everybody else tellin’ you what to do every minute of every day.

Trust.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The air is cool for this early in Autumn. The cigarette is in his hand and Ian’s voice is still a drone in the background. He’s not listening. Ian never listened. 

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Trust.

What is trust? Favors at the club. Hand-jobs outside a grocery store. A blowjob in the diner.

What is trust? Bareback porn.

What is trust? You’ll be out there bangin’ other people and I’ll be in here bangin’ other people.

What is trust? Him thinking you’re capable of killing someone. 

What is trust? You signed the paper. And he didn’t. 

What is love?

What is trust?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Love is a million fire ants and trust is a fist. 

“I wanna know how you feel, ya know?”

Mickey hears himself snort. The fire ants are gnawing at the back of his neck. The cigarette smoke is blurring Ian’s face. 

Shit-talking, bitch-slapping piece of trash that I fell for.

It’s a laugh now. You wanna know how I feel? I feel like I gave you every single fucking thing I had. I feel like I gave you every single fucking thing I had and even if it wan’t much, it was EVERYTHING. My family, my home, my son, my freedom, my tiny shreds of sanity that were left after having my heart ripped out time and time again. My attention, my ‘coming out’, my body, my mind, my fucking life. I feel like I gave you my everything. And you can’t even sign a piece of paper.

The cigarette is flicked away, the fire ants are stinging and biting and crawling all over his neck, his back, down his spine into the back of his pants, down his legs. Down his arms, shoulders taut with the burning ache of bites and open wounds. They’re spreading by the hundreds down his arms, his elbows, his wrists and finding their way to his knuckles.

My love. My trust.

The stairs are behind him, his fists are clenched. And he realizes that the only thing that’s never in his whole fucking shitstained life of disappointment and rejection and hurt and pain and violence and anger and alone; the one thing in all of that that has never let him down, the only thing are his fists. 

Tick.

Fists clenched.

Tick.

The motion is like breathing. 

Tick.

Breathing for the first time in years.

Boom. 

What have love and trust ever done for either of us?


	2. The Gas Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Ian in the same time frame.

The Gas Company

The pen feels like it weighs seven hundred pounds in his hand. His hand has turned to ice and a chill is spreading up his veins into his arms, across his shoulders and wrapping itself around his neck. His eyes flit over to Mickey. That face. That face that he wore that day. That day on the couch. And that day at the abandoned buildings. And that day in the dugouts. And that day on the front porch. And that day at the border. And that day in the cell.

That face. You caused that face.

He turns. Ian says something to the woman at the desk but he can’t find the words in his own ears and it takes entirely too long to move, to chase after him. To chase after the future he’s always wanted and always been too chicken shit to take.

He thinks about Frank and Monica. Kev and V. Fiona and Gus. Fiona and Sean. Kash and Linda. He thinks about all the failures. The what-ifs start rising like grey clouds on a sunny summer day. They’re blurring the gorgeous blue of his eyes in the elevator. 

What if I’m not good enough for him? What if I break his heart again? 

How can he say any of the things he wants to say? He’s never exactly been an open book about his disorder and maybe this is the shit they should have talked about when they were locked up and Mickey couldn’t just run away and Ian couldn’t just run away and they wouldn’t just end up punching each other and they were locked in a fucking cell together and they should have just talked then instead of banging and laughing and having fun and bitching at each other about things they couldn’t control and bitching at each other about things they could control like piss dribbles on the toilet seat. Maybe they should have talked about this shit then.

And maybe he should have said he’s afraid. He’s afraid every single second of every single day of the disorder and the things it’s already taken and the things it’s already made him and the things it will always make him and the things it could mean for the rest of their fucking lives. 

Sure, he’s stable now, but will he be forever? Will the stress of a wedding, of a forever, of a marriage make the sparks fly and the world brighten and the ground beneath his feet feel more like clouds than solid earth and the sky turn neon blue and the grass turn into a sea of emeralds? Will the zapping start under his skin as soon as the rings are pressed over their knuckles and the itch can’t be scratched by only one man for the rest of his life? Can he do that again to this man? Will he? Will trust and love mean nothing when mania takes over?

He’s stable now but will he always be? Will they be able to go on a honeymoon some time if they ever get the money and will the joy turn into overjoy and overstimulated and too fucking much that he burrows his way under the covers in some fancy resort on some beach with sandals and tequila and us? Will trust and love mean nothing when he’s unmoving beneath a sheet for the days they were supposed to love and trust and enjoy but not overjoy?

He’s stable now. He is stable now but he’s already lost so much and taken so much from the man he loves. 

Will they be Frank and Monica? Will they be fighting and fucking with nothing in between for the rest of their lives? Will they drink and do drugs and ditch their children because they can’t see the world past the end of their own fucking noses? Children. Child. Fuck. They’ve already done that. They’ve already walked away from their child. 

What does Ian know of marriage? What does Mickey know of marriage? A Russian whore and an unborn baby. 

What does Ian know of love and trust? 

He’s stable now. For the first time since he was seventeen and leaving nothing but destruction in his path for years. He’s stable now. He’s stable now when it’s court-ordered. But will he be stable when it’s not court-ordered? Will he be stable when the world becomes too much and the pills become too little? 

Will he be stable when the world they live in now is the world they’ve always lived in and it’ll always be the world they live in even if there are rings on their fingers and vows spoken? There will still be disorders and abusive parents and violence and anger and codependent siblings and needles and powder and cons and jobs and every single brick of their past building a wall between them and around them and it’s fucking suffocating out here even in fresh air and he’s smoking and he’s not talking and Ian doesn’t know what else to say. And will love and trust ever be bigger than all the other things? Will love and trust ever be bigger than broken bones and thrown punches and kicks to the face and verbal jabs and emotional assaults and an avalanche worth of past failings and a future that can never be certain? Will love and trust ever be bigger than bipolar? Will love and trust ever be bigger than being two ex-cons? Will love and trust ever be more buoyant than the anchor of their past?

Will love and trust ever be enough? Has it ever been enough? 

He’s walking up the stairs and Ian sees it in his eyes that love and trust have always been enough for him. Love and trust have always been enough for Mickey even when Mickey wasn’t receiving love and trust. Even when all Mickey was getting were broken bones and bruised flesh and a forced marriage and an unwanted child and threats and manipulation and violence and poverty and self-loathing and the tiny scraps of love and trust that were thrown his way were quickly devoured by manic highs and depressive lows and abandonment. And rejection.

Asking him how he feels is stupid. Ian knows that so suddenly when he sees those eyes land on his. He knows how Mickey feels. He feels rejected. He feels rejected again. He feels just another rejection in a life of rejection and abandonment. 

And Ian knows, he knows so deeply and so irreversibly that the worst thing he could ever do to Mickey is reject him. Bait the hook with love then ask him how it feels when the hook has punctured his esophagus, cast the line with trust and then ask how it feels when the line has become barbed wire in his gut. 

Reel him in with love and bash his brains with trust and watch as he bleeds out at your feet.

Then ask him how he feels. Ask him how he feels when his reaction to emotional torture has always been physical. Ask him how he feels when the punctuation of his entire life has been violence. Ask him how he feels when love has never been more than pain and trust has never been more than a knife in his back.

Maybe Ian is the gas company. And Mickey’s pilot light just got lit. 

Maybe it’s too late for love and trust. Maybe combustion has always been imminent. 

And the single, lonely ‘what if happiness?’ gets drowned out by all the rest. All the other what-ifs are a tidal wave and 'what if happiness' is crushed into pieces of jagged wounds and unfulfilled lives on the shore of their future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Piss on it, shit on it, light it on fire. Fuckever floats your boat. Just remember, I am merely a watcher like you trying to understand some canon events that I did not write. 
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
